


I'm not d- [ENG]

by Beethelesda



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: English, Gen, I Believe in Sherlock Holmes, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beethelesda/pseuds/Beethelesda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm not dead.<br/>Let's have dinner.</p><p>-SH</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm not d- [ENG]

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [I'm not d- [ITA]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047418) by [Beethelesda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beethelesda/pseuds/Beethelesda). 



> Everything has been already said and done about Sherlock and Watson but still, I just wanted to try something out.
> 
> This is a translation from Italian - and I'm doing this to improve my English as far as I can.  
> Unfortunately I always get the feeling that the final product "still sounds too Italian to me" and I just keep on editing, editing, editing, until I'm so very tired of it.
> 
> Should you spot any mistake or should you have some advice to give, I'm more than happy (◡‿◡✿)

The world as seen from the window of a taxi is always different from the real world.  
It's more like a movie.  
A silent film, accompanied only by the dull rolling of the camera.  
And the streets all seem less colored, almost glossy, shiny with rain freshly fallen, sliding so surreally.  
Passers-by are skillfully reciting their scripts, shaking their umbrellas and shyly stretching their hands away from the eaves, to check if it is still raining.  
Each traffic light is but a still image.

The cabin is warm, but his temple pressed against the window seems to be leaning against a thick sheet of ice.  
A slight shadow of condensation.  
Some raindrops are fearlessly stuck to the glass.  
Every so often, some of them slip, blurring the view behind their trail.

The roofing outside the stores occasionally gives up and lets go the water gathered on the fabric, pouring it down on the pavement.  
Some people walking in slow march get an unfortunate shower.

He closes his eyes for a short while.

 

Green Park abruptly eats his attention.  
There is hardly anyone. They have all sought shelter elsewhere to escape the rain.  
The trees are shaking their heads to get rid of both water and wind and the pebbles of the paths are shimmering.  
The lake of the Serpentine is still shaky, the water lilies are bravely staying afloat, clinging to their roots.  
A jogger passes, trotting along the fence.  
Turning around the Victoria Memorial suddenly feels intimidating.  
The angels perched on the monument, which usually have their eyes lost on the distant horizon, that day seem to have decided to stare at him. And they turn their marble white faces, following the route of the small black cab, without batting an eyelid.  
They all seem to know exactly where he's going.

He closes his eyes for a short while.

 

The Thames is dark and still.  
It doesn't reflect the sky, because there is almost no sky to reflect, only a thick layer of shapeless grayness, like an old felted sweater.  
The Big Ben yawns dinner time wearily. Outside the tube station of Westminster there's a long queue and a pair of paramedics in reflective orange jumpsuits. The bridge is stalled out, the cars look just like Lego bricks without wheels, resting in a long line, anchored steadily to their blocks.

On the parapet of greenish iron, there's something written in black spray paint.  
 **I BELIEVE IN S-**

He closes his eyes.  
Tightly.  
He shuts his eyelids until he can almost see fireflies.  
The frozen temple pressed against the window pulsates to the rhythm of his heart.

He keeps his eyes closed for a little longer.

 

**-**

 

Mrs. Hudson had allowed him to stay for a couple of weeks more.  
Then the weeks had become an entire month.  
And two, three, again, then the calendar had begun to stop switching pages, at a point it didn't make sense to keep counting anymore.  
The days were piling up on each other, like clothes thrown on the seatback of the chair. The hours were rolled like socks under the bed and situations, meetings, dialogues, they all were crumpled as receipts around the bin next to the desk, after countless missed hits.  
The clock radio on the bedside table was disabled, as well as the option to comment on his blog.  
No more questions, enough, enough schedules, enough with getting up at absurd times and in absurd ways just to run somewhere.  
The shutters on the windows were half open, like eyelids when you are engrossed in thinking.  
When you are awake but you're dreaming.

That afternoon, Mrs. Hudson had knocked on his door and had told him that there was mail for him and that the postman was insisting on having it delivered in person.  
He climbed down the stairs, wearing his striped pyjamas, heavily limping. What was the point, now, to even walk straight?  
He signed and took the package, a rectangular box wrapped in sellotape.  
Then he dragged his bare feet up the creaking steps, holding on to the handrail,  pushing with an effort needed only for something as heavy as lead.   
He set the package aside, hovering over a stack of papers and books, on a corner of the desk.  
And then he got back to sleep.

The package collapsed a few hours later, so he awoke brusquely and screamed.  
«STOP THAT!» he just yelled. Vehemently.   
That crazy bastard had started over, firing at the walls, he was sure of it.

But there were no more bullets embedded in the wallpaper.

Only after holding the tickling in his throat and on his cheeks for several minutes he noticed the package and decided to open it.  
A sweater.  
A horrible one.  
Dark blue, almost arsenic, of heavy wool woven thickly. A motif of braids on the chest. With a round neckline and extremely long cuffs.  
At least it was no piece of erotic junk ordered on the internet by mistake while drunk.  
These things do happen.

He slipped it over his pajama shirt, rolling up the extremely long cuffs and then shuffled in his slippers toward the kitchen.  
A kitchen - with the elements of a kitchen and nothing else.  
Cups on the table, dishes in the sink, tea bags repeatedly infused that had lost consciousness in the vicinity of the sink.  
And the red spots were just sour sauce from when he had ordered Chinese food the night before, not blood.  
And the scary thing on the plate was just a sandwich, prepared and never eaten, not a sample of tissue of some kind of beast.  
In the water pitcher floated a grape, not an eyeball.  
And all that normality once so much-vaunted, now seemed like science fiction with a strong horror tone.

He would have never had breakfast in that kitchen.

He dropped by the diner downstairs, wearing his sweater, pajamas and loose birkenstocks.  
A coffee, strong and without sugar. Bacon, no eggs, three slices, and some bread, please.  
«Sir, you're wearing pyjamas».  
«Well you're lucky enough I don't sleep naked».  
Seven Pounds for three slices of bacon, a theft. But there was also to say that, in a glorious past, the bar had had to cope with organized armies of curious people and snoops.

On the coffee table with the plastic ledge as heavy as marble, someone had left a newspaper open on the games page.  
The Crossword next to an empty Sudoku asked to complete the scheme, identify the letters in the yellow squares and then arrange them in order to form a sentence.  
«What an idiot - he said softly - the 70th prime minister was Heath, not Macmillan ...»  
The **M** forcefully occupied the yellow square.  
And in a row, beneath the crossword, nine yellow squares.  
 **I M N O T D _ _ _**

" _ **I'm not D** UMB_" he wrote in pen, completing the squares at random.  
Then he scarfed down the bacon from the dish - seven Pounds, a theft, but perhaps not as much for the taste - and stood up, leaving the newspaper to its fate.

The free newspapers distributor on the sidewalk surely had seen better days.  
Now it was decorated with flyers of various kinds, covering the cabinet in which a copy of the tabloid was on display.  
 **I'M NOT D -** you could read in large letters, before a flyer covered the rest of the writing.  
It was nothing but the cry of freedom of one of the umpteenth so-very-handsome Hollywood actors.  
" **I'm not d** ating her", he was announcing, pointing at the photo of an actress copy-pasted beside him on the cover.

«I need to get your flat clean, Doctor», said Mrs. Hudson, shielding the stairs when he tried to get back home.  
«I'm not paying you for this».  
«I'm not charging».  
Nothing to do about it, the only option was to remain outside the apartment.  
So suddenly, the lady had decided it was time to change the air to the rooms and beat the rugs.  
He just hoped that it would never come to her mind to throw anything away.  
Everything was to remain the way it was.  
Clean. But just as it was.

Because he couldn't possibly allow himself to lose something.

When you lose a friend, a brother, then you don't want to miss anything else.  
Something has already been lost and you'll unlikely find it back for good luck in the box for the lost-and-found.  
You haven't already been careful enough, haven't grieved enough, haven't been attached enough, haven't been alert enough.  
You have already been distracted, have already allowed something to go missing.  
You haven't been tight enough, you haven't been clinging enough.  
You have already let go.  
Like the ropes you try to hold taut, biting your skin, burning when slipping away.  
And you are left with your palms reddened and burned and the end of the rope is no longer visible.

When you lose a friend, a confidant, then you don't want to miss anything else.  
Something has already been lost and it is unthinkable to be able to look for something more.  
You can no longer leave anything back, can put nothing aside, or donate anything.  
You have to keep everything under control, all in plain sight, cherish everything.  
You don't want to throw anything away, you don't want to part with anything.  
You just want to hold everything back.  
Just like a dyke badly built with stacked twigs, a breach means the end.  
And even if the water escapes from just a tiny hole, sooner or later everything will collapse.

He had begun to limp again.  
No more crutch, only a slow trudging with his stiffened leg, which had returned to hurt.  
An involuntary metaphor, maybe?  
When he believed that his life had been torn off by the sand and the blasting of the mortars, he had begun limping.  
Then he had found someone to help him walk straight, back on his feet.  
And now he just bitterly regretted the sand and the blasting of the mortars.

They had done less harm.

 

He was still wearing his sweater, pyjamas and loose birkenstocks.

«Next train approaching - please spread along the platform, please mind the gap, next train approaching - please mind the gap», a conductor was nasally repeating, amplified through the speaker.  
«Sir, you're wearing pyjamas», an old lady told him, looking a little worried.  
«I know, ma'am», he answered as he raised both eyebrows.  
«Oh, nice sweater, then».

On the opposite side of the track, a billboard repeated the same advertisement twice.  
A woman wrapped in a dress without a proper shape, all weird colors and extravagant patches extravagant laughed and winked toward the bystanders.  
 _ **I'm not D** ifferent._  
 _I'm Desigual!_  
Someone had pasted some yellow stickers on the second advertisement and you could only read  
 **I'm not D-**

He allowed the Bakerloo train to take him right to Regent's Park.  
He slowly limped among travelers, swinging on his sore leg.

Where do British people go when they need to take a deep breath?  
Where do they go when the tube is too crowded and coffee does not help improving the taste of the day?  
Where, when the tourists are too many and none of them knows how to decently behave?  
Where, when a gray day is too gray and they need a change of color?  
To a park.  
This is why there are so many.

Walking was not exactly his favorite hobby, but, unable to drink some hot tea sitting on his armchair and with those bacon strips still undecided between his stomach and intestine, walking was the only feasible thing.

The sky of London was getting darker and heavier, like every other day.  
There were distant rumbles and a strong smell of wet grass in the air.  
And he wasn't even looking around.  
The frame was now useless.

Paying attention to the environment, to the path, even to the smallest details, these were things he did before.  
They were important.  
Observing every minutiae, remembering, storing, actions which were once automatic.  
They were a daily routine.

_**F** riday I'm donat **in** g!_   
_Give bloo **d**  at the_   
_Princes **s**  Grace  **H** ospital_

Said the old poster near the park entrance.  
Rain and wear had it faded out and torn, leaving only few legible letters.

F----- -- -----in-  
\---- ----d -- ---  
\-------s ----- H-------

Hope is always the last to leave.  
It 's the first thing you try not to misplace, that you continuously keep under control. You need to be sure it's always there and always will remain, like a precious ornament.  
Useless, impossible, at times even too expensive.  
In plain sight on a delicious doily.  
Until dust starts to set on it.

In a transport of sudden anger, he tried to cross the street.  
A bus stopped him with a loud horn and darted a few inches from him, slipping along Park Crescent.  
On the back, a giant advertisement for Pizza Hut.  
 **LET'S HAVE DINNER.**

He cradled his head in his hands and he blurted out aloud his usual " _BLOODY HELL!_ " then marched along Portland Place, looking for some absurd comfort in the regular rows of white buildings.  
At the junction with Devon **sh** ire Street, one of the signs hanging from the black gates of the buildings had been wrapped in plastic, a bit on the right and a bit on the left, leaving out only the letters **SH**.

«I am so done with this, today!» he yelled loudly, turning back on his steps toward the subway station.  
And, as a divine punishment for leaving halfway, it begun to rain.

A taxi pulled off and the driver rolled down the window.  
«You're Doctor John Watson, are you?»  
Drenched, wearing his sweater, pyjamas and loose birkenstocks.

«This ride is for you, sir».  
«I'm soaking wet, I just hope this will take me home».  
«I cannot tell, sir».  
He looked up at the sky, repeatedly batting his eyelids to shield his gaze from the rain.  
«Nice timing, Mycroft».

He was sure he had recognized the  _modus operandi_  and hopped in without hesitation.  
Although it hadn't been happening for months.  
Old habits were so reassuring.

«I'm sorry for your seat».  
«It has been well paid, sir».

**-**

 

The buildings of Bankside, made of iron and glass, are reflecting the clouds.  
The darkness of the early evening darkens the colors and cools the air that enters the taxi from the open window.  
After Waterloo station, the curves become more frequent.  
Then the building of the Tate Modern and its reddish bricks appear.  
«This is the end of the ride, sir», the taxi driver announces, stopping at the side entrance of the museum.  
He thanks him with a nod and walks out with a limp, leaving only a large wet spot on the cream colored seat.

The sign RE **S** TAURANT - **H** ALL is covered with black sellotape. He can only read one **S** and one **H**.  
He has almost got used to it.  
He follows the arrow pointing at the entrance of the museum's restaurant.

The room is empty.  
Silent.  
The tables of black wood and iron are placed in strict order and almost all the lights are lowered except one, at the end of the room, spotlighting a table set for two.  
Of which a chair is occupied.

And on the seatback of the chair a long coat of black cloth is resting.  
A coat and a scarf.  
A horrible one.  
Dark blue, almost arsenic, of heavy wool.

And those are the last things he manages to see, because suddenly it's as if he were to look at the world from beyond the trails of the raindrops on the window of the taxi, but it's not raining, that's not real rain, yet it is impossible to see clearly.

The phone vibrates in the pocket of his pajama trousers.  
Pulling it out is some impossible business, unlocking it to read the message received is even more impossible.  
He does nothing but wipe his face with the sleeve of that horrible dark blue sweater, almost arsenic, but continues to see everything blurry.

Fortunately, there comes his voice.

  
«I'm not dead. Let's have dinner».

 


End file.
